BCG Case Interview Tips

Published: October 22, 2017

Welcome to Part 4 of our ongoing video series – in today’s video, Jenny Rae highlights her Top 2 BCG case interview tips. If you missed the earlier videos, check out our McKinsey, Bain, and Top 3 overall case interview tips. We all know the BCG case interview is interviewer-led, but how exactly does this translate to your structure and how you move throughout the case?

BCG Case Interview Tips Video Transcription

Hi, I’m Jenny Rae. I’m an ex-Bain consultant. This is Lisa, she’s ex-McKinsey. We’re at Management Consulted, and we’re talking a little bit about top tips for BCG cases. Lisa, what are your thoughts on BCG cases? Well, you can go really wrong in a BCG case. They are I think a little bit more complex than McKinsey cases when it comes to driving the case, although reading in McKinsey case it might seem a little bit harder. But what do you think are the key tips that you would give someone for looking at a BCG case?

Interview Tip: Find the Value

So I start all of my clients on BCG style cases regardless of the firm of their interviewing with. The goal is really to help them understand what the most important things are inside the case. I think that’s one thing that BCG gives you. If you’re going to be successful in a BCG case, you have to know how to find value on your own. You can’t let the interviewer take you to it. So what that looks like in your upfront structure, is that you have to have your buckets in order of priority. So you can’t just look at data here and look at data there and kind of eventually develop a thesis. You really have to think, if I could only look at one bucket what’s the only one that I want to look at? You have to make sure that that one’s first.

Gather Data

Then also inside your buckets, in terms of the metrics that you’re looking at, you really have to be good at data gathering, because if you spend all of your time talking about concepts and not driving to data, you can’t eliminate some items and validate others. So for BCG, it’s really important that you both have that super prioritized structure, and also inside the buckets that you have good clarity.

So to recap:

Prioritize your data buckets!

Focus on the most important things inside the case

Drive to the data – you can’t spend all of your time talking about concepts!

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